Creating a prototype with swipr

First of all, a very happy and succesful 2007 to all of you!

I've had a number of questions about how to create an actual prototype with swipr. The normal output is a clickable version of the sitemap or screenflow, with popups for all the wireframes. Within the popup window it is possible to jump from wireframe to wireframe, but people would like to show the prototype in a normal browser window, instead of in the popup. Of course, this is possible, and I'll show you how to do this here.

In the 'normal' export of swipr, a popup window is launched everytime the user clicks on one of the screen elements in the swipr screenflow/sitemap. This window opens the file fd_popup.htm with the screennumber as its argument.

To have a prototype that does not work in popup screens, you will need a new copy of the fd_popup.htm. This is a very stripped-down version of the original, without any of the tabs to show additional information. The only thing this new version does is load the correct wireframe image, plus it's related imagemap, based on the screennumber argument. This means yu will always need to start your prototype with a call to this new fd_popup and a valid screen number as its argument.

The way I normally do this is by creating a new 'prototype' directory on the same level as the wireframes and comments directories. You place the new and stripped-down version of fd_popup.htm. Then, you edit the title page for the swipr screenflow. This page normally contains a link to page 00 (or whatever is the first page in your sitemap/screenflow). You can add a new link to open the first page of your prototype. (see image below).


This will open the first page in the same browser window, and WILL NOT have any of the tabs that a 'normal' swipr wireframe has. An example can be found on the swipr website.

I hope this will help you in creating a proper prototype using swipr.